Fugue in d minor

A four-part fugue exercise composed on a given subject, with no particular instrumentation in mind. Developing the subject contrapuntally wasn’t difficult, but after a while it became rather monotonous. The labels A1, A2, B1, etc. indicate the various fragments on which the episodes are built. (The slurs are only meant to highlight motifs for my own reference.)

For future fugues, to break up the monotony, maybe you could have more sequences with less voices? For most of Bach's 4-voice fugues, like half the fugue is for less than 4 voices. So having lots of 3 or 2 voice sequences and switching which voice combinations are doing said sequences really helps with monotony. Thank you for the enjoyable fugue 🙂

Thanks for the comment! You’re absolutely right that thinning out the texture can help keep things fresh — that idea crossed my mind as well while writing.

I treated it more like a fugue d’école rather than a stylistically Baroque fugue (the subject itself is a 20th‑century textbook theme), so I kept the four‑voice texture going longer than I normally would. I also thought about extending some of the three‑voice spots, but the subject is already pretty long and the tempo is on the slower side, so the whole thing was starting to feel a bit too stretched out.

Still, your point is totally valid, and I appreciate you mentioning it. Glad you enjoyed the fugue!